A Fresh Start

Guys, it's been a year that absolutely none of us expected. Back in March I thought I was finishing up the last of my spring weddings, would be done by April, and ready to start this blog and business full time! Little did I know that the pandemic would keep us at home for the next six months and the world would look so different in the fall. Starting this at that time didn't feel right, plus I didn't have the energy...something about being home- day in and day out with kids to try to keep entertained was emotionally and physically exhausting (If you're a mom I can hear you nodding along with me). We suddenly had all of this time and yet there was somehow so much more to do...we were actually cooking, cleaning (more than normal), sanitizing our groceries, and stressing out constantly about the state of the world.

During quarantine, I kept thinking about the future, thinking about the big goals I had and kind of putting them on a shelf in my mind- saving them for a different day. Wanting to be “productive”, but also looking around knowing that having my eight year and three old at home all day and wanting all of my attention is actually quite a privilege that I absolutely did not want to waste. It won’t be long before they want nothing to do with me (at least that’s what I’ve been told). Looking back on that season of life…I realize that I actually did SO MUCH. I got my freaking life in order. I learned to cook, I learned how to put HEALTHY food on the table, not just thawed out chicken nuggets (I know that seems crazy and I LOVED to cook in college, but since I had little ones around I honestly had not been doing much in the kitchen for the last 8 years). I learned how to be a morning person and wake up to actually seize the day and not just let the day happen to me….I spent the first month of quarantine waking up at 10 or 11am dreading the smallest little things…unloading the dishwasher, opening my email inbox…not to get too dark and cloudy, but looking back it was a full blown depression…I just didn’t know it at the time. Now I wake up regularly at 5am to go to the gym...who am I? Coming out of that I can now look back and see all of the valuable things I was doing and learning during that time…it didn’t feel productive, it didn’t feel like I was accomplishing anything, but dang- I needed that season to grow into the person who was ready to start this new venture.

It's been a LONG year and it's not over yet...the kids are back in school, activities have started up, and we have some real normalcy in our lives right now...but I'm hesitant...assuming disaster could strike again at any moment. In the meantime, I'm desperately excited to get back to blogging and sharing our home. I started sharing it last November with all of the optimism in the world and a "don't wait" mentality (borrowed from Chris loves Julia), but the reality was I still had several wedding clients and my workload was pretty heavy. That all dissipated with the pandemic and while I do still have a handful of rescheduled Covid weddings in my future, I currently have a completely open schedule to start my dream job! The job I've been fantasizing about doing for the last ten years! If you are new here, let me give you some background...

I have an interior design and art degree, but I’ve been wedding planning for the last 8 years. After planning my own wedding I dove into a business I knew I could build and be good at, but for the last few years my first passion of interior design kept eating away at me. I spent all of my free time reading design books and following along with interior design blogs. It was consuming me, but I still chipped away at my day job of planning weddings, at this point it had become a good income for my family and the thought of leaving it behind was truly scary. Two years ago we got our first real office space and I took on the project of decorating it. About halfway into that project I realized that I was more passionate about decorating my office than I had been about a wedding in years. I was also listening to the How I Built This and Second Life podcasts constantly and listening to other entrepreneurs success stories of leaving behind their first careers and following their passion…I couldn’t help but feel like I was kind of stuck. My family relied pretty heavily on my income and by leaving my wedding business behind I was going to be asking them to make a lot of sacrifices. It felt (feels) incredibly selfish…but by the time September 2019 rolled around and I was staring at a full wedding season in front of me I knew I had to stop booking weddings. I knew what I wanted to do and wanting to start an interior design blog is probably the business I should have started years ago. I even tried a few times to get one off the ground, but my day job (weddings) always had to come first because my clients (who I loved dearly) were depending on me.

So here I am. It’s been a long journey to get here, but I am SO excited to finally be putting 110% of myself into this blog and business. Last year we bought a house with my mother after my dad passed away, in our dream neighborhood and we are all SO excited to be here and the house, while already beautiful, NEEDS A LOT OF LOVE and STYLE. Join me as I work to make over each room and share the process along the way. I am going to be dealing with the challenges of a mother who has A LOT of opinions and a husband that has ZERO opinions and trying to meld our styles together. Along the way, I can’t wait to share what I learned at an accredited interior design school with you- I also plan to share other things as well- some recipes that have sustained me during quarantine, travels (my families second home happens to be Disney World), peeks into my garden, and truly so much more.

If you have been here from the beginning- thank you, it means so much that there are a handful of you out there that have been following along from the start! If you are new here, welcome home.